Hospital/clinic ethics committees in Turkey and the world

Hospital/clinic ethics committees (HEC) are formed to save and to protect patients’ wellbeing, health and their wellfare. These HEC have three main objectives: to consider ethical implications of disputed issues, to make decisions in these issues to inform health workers, patients and persons with close relations to patients. There is still an ongoing discussion over necessity of HECs, their decision making processes, and compositon of these committees. These committees appeared first belirin USA during 1960s and similiar committees were founded in European countries in 1980s. There is a wide range of variability among different committees in different countries, sometimes even in the same country among different regions, due the fact that these committees were formed to answer different needs. First ethical committees in Turkey, were ethical committees formed after a regulation about drug trial studies in 1993. However, there is already no formal regulations on HEC in our country. Although temporary committees within university clinics are rarely formed just to discuss ethical problems for special cases, as needs force; these committees, most of time, as a clinical council evaluating cases only for to reach a clinical decision, are not permanent and formal. We decided to figure out current status of HECs in Turkey via this study. A survey form, consisting of 14 questions, was send to administirations of 52 tertiary referral hospitals, and then, given responses to these forms were evaluated. Current status of HECs were defined according to the result of this survey. In this presentation, both historical milestones in the development of HECs and the current status of these committees in Turkey is discussed.